BioShock

The Good
I confess that I bought an X-box 360 for this game. After 2 years of hearing how wonderful it was, I broke down and tried it. I hooked up the unit to my HD TV and experienced something remarkable.

2k studios spent a great deal of effort designing this game. They designed an entire city, sculpted and shaped in the Art Nuevo of the preceding decades. Then they smashed it with blunt objects of war and destruction. The details are astounding, portraying a beautiful gleaming city in the process of an ugly death. Everywhere you look, you see what it was and what it is. Rubble and debris. Surprisingly creepy…

Using the Unreal 2.5 engine, The graphics are detailed, revealing textures and dimensions that add to the feeling of being in a real environment. The sound is equally well done, with subtle music cues. You won’t forget the first time you hear someone sing a gospel in a weary, lost voice. The random pieces of dialogue you hear from the NPCs wandering around only contribute to the sense of madness that has possessed Rapture.

Gameplay is an elaborate gun and run mix up, enhanced by weapon choice, weapon improvement and general collection of supplies. I really like how you can use different approaches to killing your enemies.

One of the biggest points of the game is the story. It’s told through old tapes, ghosts, NPC narrations, and settings in the environment. Its not your run of the mill tacked on adventure. Its critical to the game and how it is played. I was taken by surprise when I saw the rooms that the little sisters were kept in. It was reminiscent of the brutal experimentations that were done by behaviorist in the early 20th century. B.F. Skinner is even mentioned in passing.

Voice acting was pretty good, if not slightly over the top. The accents were heavy and seemed to be coming from a b-movie cast.

It was very cool, how you had a few methods for turning enemies in to allies against their will. It was even cooler, how you could rack up achievement points for Xbox live.

The Bad
For a game based on self-determination, this game is pretty linear. You can find a lot of cool stuff by wandering off the path, but to progress, you have to pretty much follow the directions put before you. The game even alludes to it about 2/3 of the way. You end up normally using 2-3 plasmids for most of the game and the same goes for the weapons.

And its short and a little on the easy side. Replay value is not its strongest point.

The Bottom Line
This game is proof that games can be art and have a meaning to them. And yes, it was worth buying the Xbox 360.

The Good
Drug users might appreciate the graphics - during combat BioShock often seems more of a psychedelic arcade game what with the quick pace and all the chaotic effects thrown in.

The Bad
First of all, this game was supposed to be a spiritual successor to the epic FPS/RPG System Shock 2. Unfortunately something went terribly wrong in the process and we ended up with a incoherent shooter where nothing really works. Oddly hailed by essentially all reviewers as revolutionary, BioShock does not really bring anything new to the genre. Sadder still, it's mostly a setback, at least as far as PC games are concerned.

The complex gameplay from SS2 was drowned to the point where one begins to wonder which SS2 they were making a sequel of: System Shock 2 or Serious Sam 2? Gone are the stats that differentiated one player from another: you can now do everything right from the beginning. Gone is the limited inventory. Now you can carry around everything you pick up. Well, not quite. You can only carry nine med-kits and nine eve-hypos. Apparently despite totting around a flame thrower with several huge canisters of ammo, a grenade launcher, a shotgun, a machine gun and god knows what else, if you picked up one more med-kit when you already have nine you'd collapse to the ground from your burden. Gone is the weapon degradation. You pick up a revolver in the beginning and it works perfectly even after firing a thousand rounds and being dragged alone through water, fire and god knows what else. The grenade launcher looks like it's made of cloth... luckily it's special indestructible cloth. Gone are limited resources, now you'll regularly reach the artificial limits on the ammo you carry with you, which in a way is good because unlike in SS2 you'll be forced to empty entire machine gun magazines to clear the average room.

Psi powers are replaced by some sort of Oblivion-like magic spells. Compared to psi powers there are far fewer of these spells, they aren't as nearly as inventive or intricate, and the spell mana is never in short supply. You can hypnotize a big daddy to help you or throw stuff around with them, but other than that they're just like weapons except that at certain points the game will present puzzles to you that involve these spells. Unfortunately the puzzles are laughably simple, as in melt some ice blocking your way with the incinerate spell. Very revolutionary.

Much was made of the choices that you could make in BioShock. Except one non-choice that affects only which end-game cinematic you receive, the choices involve which gun you'll shoot an enemy with. I remember Levine saying that this is going to be a game that's impossible to write a walkthrough for. Now that the cat's out of the bag we finally see what he meant: it would be extremely tedious and counterproductive to write a walkthrough for a completely liner shooter like BioShock. Shockingly, Levine said a lot of things yonder at TTLG which now look like complete lies because he knew TTLG'S SS2 fans would promote his product for free.

Much is now made of the physics that BioShock presents, however even though they used the well-tested Havok engine they evidently couldn't figure how to set it up properly. Dead bodies twitch uncontrollably, boxes fly towards the ceiling when I walk over them, and so on. And the physics is pretty much limited to throwing things around. You can throw as many grenades around as you want - you'll never break glass. Wouldn't it be cool the glass cracked if you shot it too much and water invaded the place (of course at that depth that would be insta-death). But that would be innovative. The game also has many invisible walls, which always signal lazy design.

The combat is very chaotic. There are a ton of enemies, they move around very quickly, never standing still, and everyone seems to tot around a whole armory. Unfortunately it's extremely repetitive as well, as the game only has two kinds of enemies. There are splicers, which are humans gone crazy. There minimal visual variation between them and they seem to posses no intelligence whatsoever. One kind of them can climb ceilings, which is fun the first ten times you see it. And there are "big daddies" - walking diving suits that protect invincible "little sisters". A limitation of Havok means you can't gib enemies. No matter how many grenades you chuck at a dead big daddy he'll just ragdoll. Wonderful progress!

The interface did not escape the dumbing down - gone is the right-click into interact mode from SS2 where you could do everything. And even worse when you access anything the game pauses. In SS2 moments when you had to access the inventory or hack a system or whatever were always very tense because the game kept running while you were doing this. In BioShock you can run up to a hostile rocket-launching turret and spend all the time you need hacking it since the world is temporarily suspended for your benefit. Gosh, if only real life had that feature. Fonts are now big, and game text is short and to the point. I guess modern casual gamers can't be trusted with too complex a prose. There's even a freaking "quest pointer" ala Oblivion. Except it's taken to the next level. Not only does it show you which direction to go to, it even points exactly which doors to traverse! Maybe in BioShock 2 the game will walk automagically and you'll only have to shoot enemies as you coast along.

Like in SS2, the game does not end if you die. You respawn in a Vita Chamber. Except that this time the machines are far more frequent, do not require activation, cost nothing, and restore half of your health and mana. In SS2 it was often very inconvenient to die, and especially on hard/impossible it was preferable to load a saved game, but in BioShock it makes you effectively immortal. One has to wonder why bother with the respawning at all? Just have the player be in god-mode like the little sisters.

The artwork and story did nothing for me. I'd already read Rand's work a long time ago so seeing it butchered in a below-mediocre game was distinctly unimpressive. Thanks to the chaotic gameplay it's very hard to follow what exactly is going on at all, and listening to audio logs is a pain since there's almost always shooting going on.

The survival-horror element from SS2 is gone, for the above reasons. BioShock has a strong cartoony-arcadey thing going, kind of like Serious Sam.

What else? Well, there's the DRM. It works for some people, it doesn't for others. All I know is that my DVDRW has been failing a lot since I've installed SecuROM (which also comes with the demo?!)

The Bottom Line
BioShock is a terribly over-hyped shooter. What I wrote above just barely scratches the surface of what's wrong with it. IMO it's inferior to FEAR and the like. About as fun as Quake 4, I'd say. At first I thought I was just getting too old for this sort of stuff, so I fired up some older games I used to love (System Shock 2, Silent Hill 3, Psychonauts), but no, they're as good as they were then. I've finally realized that it's not me at all - BioShock is just a really bad game.

The Good
System Shock 2 was one of those game experiences that will stick with you your entire life. It did one thing perfectly: Isolation. You were on a spaceship, thousands of miles away from home. Everyone, save for a mysterious female communicating VIA radio, is dead. No other game has ever captured the dread and feeling of being trapped, isolated, and alone as well as SS2. It even beats out the Silent Hill games, and that is saying a lot. It was a sleeper hit, but a hit nonetheless, and the developers have returned with their latest title: BioShock.

The first thing one will notice about BioShock are its beautiful visuals. I do not like the Unreal 3 engine much; most companies use it to make "realistic" looking games and they all look terrible. Yet when Epic Games and a few other developers have used the Unreal engine to create... well, something UNRealistic the engine looks awesome. BioShock is one of those games. BioShock's visuals are not just technically amazing, the art design is striking and incredibly defined. Combining the beautiful visuals with the ingenious art design makes BioShock one of the best looking games out there aesthetically and technically, even 2 years later.

The story is downright awesome. Like System Shock 2, Dead Space and the first and and fourth Silent Hill games, the games plot isn't so much about the protagonist as it is the world around him and having it all come together at the end explaining his purpose in the grand finale. BioShock's story is about the town of Rapture, and the story flows beautifully is excellently written.

The story reminds me a lot of something David Chronenberg would concoct, and that is HIGH praise because Chronenberg is my all time fav director. Chronenberg's films all have one underlying main theme: The loss of humanity by some bizarre means. Seth Brundle transforms into a fly, Max Renn becomes a killer programmed by a mind controlling TV, and the citizens of Rapture alter their genetic code to the point their bodies begin to degrade along with their minds. The story is extremely deep, and the various PDAs and other items that help fit the pieces together as well as provide insight into the lives of certain citizens in rapture are for once actually fun to find because the story is so involving. I will go as far to say that this story has impressed me more than any other story in a FPS game in a long time. There are too many memorable characters and scenes to count; one of my favourite being an insane artist who wants to make his "masterpiece" by killing his foes and taking a picture of them to "immortalize" them. It has all the grotesque, subhuman horror that pleases me as well as a great political and analytical allegory.

Rapture is a living breathing place. The story helps get you interested, but as you play on you'll feel like a real citizen of the accursed submerged city. Another thing that makes it like this is the games highly touted "Emergent AI." Believe it or not, this concept is executed quite well. The AI doesn't seem like anything special the first time around, but when the game opens its doors a little you'll see why its so impressive. Each entity "lives" in Rapture. Big Daddies go upon their business unscripted, and so do the splicers. Of course there are set-pieces, but outside of these every entity in the game is living in rapture and has a realistic and impressive AI controller.

The environment is also at your disposal. See that splicer standing over by that leaking oil barrel? See that body of water near him? Well, set the oil on fire and catch the splicer on fire, and as he runs to the pool of water, send lightning to fry him! Did you hack that health dispenser? Well, go ahead and let your foe run away and use it.. they'll just get a face-full of poison! The environment is one of the games best weapons, and using the plasmids to manipulate it is awesome and very entertaining.

The voice acting is awesome and helps put emotion and feeling into the story, only making the story even more entertaining. The game will tug several emotions with its excellent audio design. Beautiful music and excellent voice acting makes the game just as impressive in the audio department as it is in the tech department.

There are a lot of secrets to find. The game has replay value because you will miss a lot the first time around. There are tons of treasures to find in Rapture and its worth returning a few times to try and find it all, I'm normally not a completionist but finding these secrets are so satisfying that even I was compelled to do it. The games replay value also benefits from a good skill development system and the aforementioned emergent AI. Save for the set pieces, the game will never be the same when you do a replay.

The Bad
The games difficulty is inconsistent. The game is ridiculously easy thanks to the "VitaChambers" which respawn you with your exact inventory and if you were in the middle of a battle, the enemy will still be damaged. This keeps the flow and it is nice at times, but at others it gives you less reason to continue surviving because Death is never really a penalty. Yet other times, the game is hard as hell. Naturally the game gets harder, but the big daddies on the medium or higher difficulty will kick your ass left and right and sometimes battles with them are frustrating.

The game is somewhat short if you decide to do a bare bones playthrough.

Although skill development is here and it is well done, the game isn't as deep as System Shock 2 in regards to the RPG/FPS hybrid elements. There is no manageable inventory (Which is annoying when you want something in a container that also contains something you DON'T want since the game gives you no choice to just take one item instead of all of them.) and you don't have class choice, which does cut the replay value down a little.

The PC version has some more glitches and bugs than the other versions, and DRM is a pain.


The Bottom Line
I'm pretty much speechless. Sometimes, unanimous critical acclaim is actually founded. This is easily the best shooter since Half-Life 2 and a great spiritual successor to System Shock 2. Its a unique game and a ton of fun, with an incredible design philosophy and technically impressive styling. Well, what are you waiting for? If you haven't played this yet despite it being around for 2 years, then go out and play it now!